You did not provide a service by snipping the first fifth off a good article in The Atlantic, just so readers could skip to the part where they start talking about the guy who started Citrix.
This whole story is really interesting; it involves entrepreneurship in one of our least agile, most fucked up industries (air travel). If you've done a lot of business travel, it also (I hope) has some emotional resonance, because business air travel is an abusive experience.
I started following James Fallows after I heard him on NPR talking about "Free Flight", a book I recommend even though it wasn't particularly predictive. "Free Flight" is a book about the Cirrus SR-20 and the Eclipse E500; the former is a short-hop prop plane with advanced navigation and a whole-plane parachute, the second is an ultra-efficient jet the size of an SUV. Both are trying to establish an "air taxi" market for short-hop flights between underused airports.
I love the idea of being able to drive to a tiny airport, walk up to a counter, show my ID, go right out to a small waiting airplane, and being in the air 5 minutes later. That somewhat interesting software is being used to price the legs ($300-$1200 now, 1-2 orders of magnitude below charter, on par with business class or full-fare coach now) seems like a footnote.
Page one of this story is an insanely long, slightly unrelated article about aircraft development, new engine technology and airline politics: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/dayjet. Sorry about linking to page two of the news story, but it is for your own good.
This whole story is really interesting; it involves entrepreneurship in one of our least agile, most fucked up industries (air travel). If you've done a lot of business travel, it also (I hope) has some emotional resonance, because business air travel is an abusive experience.
I started following James Fallows after I heard him on NPR talking about "Free Flight", a book I recommend even though it wasn't particularly predictive. "Free Flight" is a book about the Cirrus SR-20 and the Eclipse E500; the former is a short-hop prop plane with advanced navigation and a whole-plane parachute, the second is an ultra-efficient jet the size of an SUV. Both are trying to establish an "air taxi" market for short-hop flights between underused airports.
I love the idea of being able to drive to a tiny airport, walk up to a counter, show my ID, go right out to a small waiting airplane, and being in the air 5 minutes later. That somewhat interesting software is being used to price the legs ($300-$1200 now, 1-2 orders of magnitude below charter, on par with business class or full-fare coach now) seems like a footnote.